taximan61

Got the car October 2015 when it was 4 years old and had 115k on. One owner and with a full dealer history, paid £4500 for it. Had a recurring problem with front discs warping, 2 sets only lasted a couple of months. Garage eventually sorted it, inside the caliper pin rubber guides there are plastic spacer rings, these go brittle with the heat and jam the caliper, used to be a problem on the old AX models I'm told. These were removed and all is well. Up to now had regular servicing, pads/discs all round, tyres ( 19inch Arcadia alloys, hate them, give a hard ride )and just this week fitted a new battery, the original one was still on the car. Believe it or not the best battery deal was Halfords ( with trade card ) an 096, 75 amp hour for £73. Love the car but in the future I will have an automatic. Town Centre garage ( Sunderland ) have 2 beautiful C5 tourers in but way too expensive for me. EML on at the moment, it's the EGR valve but car still running perfectly.

I had a similar issue. Before I had 4 wheel alignment carried out I had the suspension checked thoroughly. Rear of front wishbone bushes were worn, replaced these, tracking done, no more bad and uneven tyre wear.

I am posting this in case anyone else has problems and would like to share my experience. I had to park my car up for 6 to 8 weeks as I was having a replacement hip fitted, December and part of January so cold weather. First thing that I did wrong was to leave the battery connected, handbook says disconnect if not used for more than 4 weeks. When I went to start the car the battery was flat, 8 hours on a trickle charger and the car started first time. When driving it I noticed that the heater fan was not working, very cold in the car and unable to keep the windows clear. Visited my usual garage where all of the basics were checked, condition of battery, fuses, put it on diagnostic which showed very little. They suggested going to an auto-electrician as modern electrical systems are very complex and not to be played with, fair enough. Booked in at auto electricians, in the meantime I rang Citroen and priced the parts, resistor £162 and fan motor £252. Then followed all of the comments from " those in the trade " Nightmare of a job, dash to be taken out, airbags removed, one even said that the dash fixing bolts might be fitted from the outside and the windscreen would have to come out !!!!!!!!!!!!! I was starting to panic as I love this car and really did not want to change it. Never mind, the auto electrician deduced that it was the resistor and did a temporary fix, advising me that it would fail again so a new one would be needed, great service, got me back on the road. He showed me a picture of the resistor, got a genuine Hella OEM one from Ebay for £45. Happy days. Now back to the motor, again I consulted Springfield Citroen in Gateshead ( in case it was the motor ) who quoted £421.74 to supply and fit a new motor, hang on, if the part is £252 that's not a lot of main dealer labour. About 2.5 hours they said, worst bit is getting the glovebox out, then it's pretty straightforward, a bit fiddly but not too bad. So no need to remove airbags or windscreen then ? No we've done a few, it,s not a nightmare. Lesson learned, listen to those who know and have done the work before, sometimes the dealer is not only the best option but in this case very reasonable. After all my C5 ( used as a taxi ) has only done 158k, lots of life left yet. Hope this is useful.

Got mine sorted at Steering Services in Wakefield. Same day service, removal, re-conditioning and re-fitting, about £360. Need to travel to Wakefieldto get it done, mines been great since, no problems and a great service. They do about 3 a week.

The guys at Wakefield Steering Specialists recommend moving the gaiter that lies near the pedals in the footwell and spraying some thick grease onto the seal and housing where the pinion enters the rack to prevent the water ingress and subsequent damage to the seal. Parkesie, thanks for the reply, I tried ACS ( Leicester if I recall ) but they didn't have one.

This seems to be a very common problem on the X7 C5's, in my opinion it is a design fault. Anyway, my 2011 C5 Tourer with Hydractive 3 developed the dreaded leak. After taking blood pressure medication following the dealers quote I turned to this website. I am so pleased that I did. I noticed that a firm in Wakefield was mentioned a couple of times so I phoned them for a quote ( they are on Ebay as well ). Steering Services quoted £355 including fitting at their premises in Wakefield, I live in County Durham so it was a 200 mile round trip and a full day lost, I am a taxi driver so I need the car every day. Tried my usual garage who quoted about the same including labour, problem was that no local firm had an exchange rack on the shelf, I had to have mine removed and they would re-manufacture it in 2/3 days. That meant almost a week off the road, I opted for Wakefield. Arrived at their premises at 07.45 and they immediately got on with the job, after breakfast at a local cafe I went back and they already had the rack off and showed me the fault with the water ingress into the top seal and the very small perforations on an aluminium pipe, this pipe was an extra £100 but did need changing, dealer part only. The job progressed very well even though one of the arms was worn and had to be replaced, that was in with the price. The biggest problem was doing the tracking. My car has those 19 inch Arcadia wheels which a normal tracking gauge won't fit properly. They took the car to a local specialist for four wheel alignment, an extra £65 but well worth it. I had suspected that one of the rear wheels was out of line and it was, it was a long way out. Finally left Wakefield at 4.45pm and the car drove really well, a noticeable difference in the feel of the steering. I can highly recommend these people, very professional, very well organised and kept me in touch every so often to let me know what was happening. While I was waiting they took another booking for a C5 rack fitting and another arrived via courier to be worked on, they do at least 2 C5's a week. Stan , Chester le street.